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Clean, white marble, glossy walls, and modern paintings of lines and geometric shapes defined the darkened meeting room where a large screen positioned in front of nine silent figures played a curated selection of combat footage, sound removed.
Students on a dark, grassy battlefield lit only by generous moonlight and a clear night sky. Unstable footage from low angles, flicking between the viewpoints of various ankle cuffs.
Then more appreciable angles in gray concrete and desolate buildings, as those same students displayed their powers once more. Quiet murmurs from the audience, but the most discernible reactions were sudden gasps and a
"Woah" as a blade cut clean through an angled section of the villa. The building section sloughed off, then crashed to the floor, scattering debris and dust in its wake.
Dead silence now as the rest of the clips played out and by the time the lights began easing gradually back to life, the eight gathered Precursors were already staring at Director Lina Zhang, sitting at the head of the table opposite the large monitor, facing both them and the screen. Her smooth hands covered each other on the glass surface in front of her, fingers relaxed and steady. She looked the most at ease out of the nine.
"So this was what you wanted." Benediction adjusted the collar of his beige turtleneck, fingers hooking into the fabric a bit too long for it to have been a casual gesture.
"A team. For yourself. Composed of children.""Naked children," Sparrow laughed nervously at her own attempt to shift the mood, pushing into the chair's backrest out of embarrassment when no one found anything humorous about the situation. She wasn't in her signature Victorian-esque dress, preferring a pastel yellow chenille sweater and comfortable, dark jeans when she didn't need to primp and preen for the media. Her golden curls were swept into a loose tail hanging off her right shoulder and light blue eyes regarded the notorious Director nervously.
"Yeah. The press'll really eat this up," Merlin drawled, sarcastically adding to his teammate's sentiments. The young man idly fiddled with the cuffs of his tailored Oxford shirt as he snarked,
"I'm sure there are classier ways to shoot your reputation to pieces besides blatant CP."Prism scoffed.
"You'd know all about that, wouldn't you?"The projectile mage's athleticism was evident in her choice of clothing, a simple outfit that consisted of dark sports tights, a thin windbreaker and a t-shirt a few sizes too large for the woman's petite frame. Workout clothes, no doubt. The violet-eyed woman chose to ignore Merlin's indignant glare, instead turning to Zhang.
"Those X-marks couldn't even finish a team exercise without tearing each other apart. How long is it going to be before I get called to put down one of your child psychos again?"A thin smile pulled on the Director's mouth.
"With any luck, one of Dreamcatcher's will take care of that for you. We certainly wouldn't want to trouble you for too many personal murders. But I didn't jump through hoops with the Secretary of Defense to bicker. You're all here because you needed to see how far their powers have advanced in the span of three days. From the records, it took the majority of you months to achieve a change that dramatic. Their potential is astounding. I would not have it wasting away in relative safety."Foresight folded and unfolded a small square of paper in her corner seat, furthest from the Director. Hunched over in a gray sweater dress, her long, auburn hair spilled onto the table, obscuring the profile of her face as pale, slender fingers alternately creased and smoothed the overworked paper. She stared at the nonsense map of lines she had folded into the page, hazel eyes tracing and turning at random intersections.
When her thoughts had finally found their way out of the labyrinth in her mind, she looked up, blinking slowly at the Director.
"We're not enough?" she asked quietly.
Dark brown eyes narrowed back at her and Foresight looked back to her sheet, folding and unfolding once more.
"You tell me, Foresight. Are the Precursors enough?"They didn't need Foresight's power for the answer. All she would have given them was another question anyway: Enough for what? For her part, the clairvoyant didn't seem to hear the Director's response, focused as she was on folding a series of parallel lines into one corner of her paper.
"We're enough," Benediction cut in, answering the question for her.
"Your proposed team is clearly not. They were lucky to survive against...against Menagerie.""Not Simeon?" the Director replied, innocent curiosity on her face.
"Menagerie." Benediction sat back in his chair, folding his arms firmly. That topic was closed.
With a sigh, the Director mimicked the action, though she wasn't as severe in her movements.
"This is part of the proposal. This isn't a display of their brilliant tactics. It's a display of raw strength. They have enough, and in just three days their powers have improved by leaps and bounds. It's uncanny, and I think it warrants at least your tentative interest. In the worst case, they die fighting. In the best case, they become a second team to cover the slack the Precursors can't devote attention to. Cat's Cradle, for example. Fracture, for another."The mention of both names pulled the uneasy atmosphere of the room taut and Sparrow laughed nervously again, looking between Benediction and the Director.
"Those guys are pretty strong, too, though," she said.
"Still stronger than them, at least.""Long-term goals, Sparrow," the Director answered easily, dismissing the concern. Of the Precursors' approvals, she worried least about Sparrow's. The girl would follow whatever Kadabra decided, so she turned to the group's
de facto tactician in his usual dark red hoodie and faded jeans, waiting on his response. He had been silent until then, no doubt weighing the pros and cons of it all and it was Kadabra who she would have the most trouble convincing, even more than the disagreeable Benediction.
The Precusor in question merely returned the eye contact, still seemingly deep in thought as he drummed fingers against the smooth surface of the table. He spoke up eventually though, before the Director could prompt further.
"...Their powers seem to have improved in a short amount time, yes. But have you been able to pinpoint why?" "We have our best staff working on that," she answered smoothly.
"Suffice it to say their abilities are stable and constantly improving. That should be more than sufficient to help bolster firepower, especially against more difficult enemies."β
So this isβ¦β -Vincent gestured at the screen with a flick of his wrist ββ
β¦everything you have, as of now?β
"Call it a preview of what's to come." She tapped the touch-activated remote in front of her several times, pulling up stills of certain students and cycling through them until she found more notable ones.
"Callan Webb," she indicated with the remote at an aquamarine-haired girl swinging another boy by the legs, the image frozen at the moment she let go.
"The dossiers I've sent to the DoD and, by extension, the Precursors, have covered this, but I'll note some interesting details my subnatural analyzer has found from repeated observation: persistent superstrength, and that in itself would be valuable, but her real power lies in a creature hiding in her shadow. You'll recall Cancer of Cat's Cradle. Very similar, though hers doesn't seem to be a devourer sort. It's simply strong. Enough to take down a category three alone and perhaps hold its ground against a four. And all of us here can appreciate the strength of simplicity, no?"Two quick taps of the remote to move the image forward a fraction, playing another half second as the lanky boy flew into a short, vertical wall, leaving pants behind mid-air and nearly smashing through the concrete, emerging from the crater with little more than annoyance and dust on his shoulders.
"Sander Lorraine. A vampire, of sorts, with little of the drawbacks you'll find in typical lore. Another one with superstrength, but given enough blood his damage resistance gradually increases to invulnerability. That's nothing new, of course. They've already figured out that much at Director Kuznetsov's facility. But he goes further than that. The previous facility notes fail to sufficiently cover the real extent of his powers, though my staff suspects he, too, could withstand the might of something that can annihilate cities."The screen moved again, shifting to focus on Grant and freezing as the camera zoomed in.
"Grant Rotem. Manipulates non-living matter. You've seen what he managed with the concrete and his failed attempt to stop his teammate from nearly flying into him. You'll also note he has a more flexible array of materials to work with, now that he's managed to manipulate two different surfaces at once. And the more manipulators he attaches to the same surface, the better his fine control of it. Quite versatile, and he's only just begun to improve."She let the video play unhindered now, not bothering to point out more students for the moment.
"Everything I have hasn't manifested in visual form so easily. The specifics of their powers sound too much like idle speculation without some basis of proof, which I've provided here. Coupled with what you've seen, what more I've told you should sound believable, as fantastic as it is."As the Directorβs short speech ebbed, Vincent looked like he was content to let the silence stretch, simply watching with bored eyes and resuming the idle motion with his fingers. He spoke again soon enough though, just before the reticence could grow too thick.
β
Iβd still say that you're too ambitious. These children have been in, what, two skirmishes? Yet you want to pit them against Catβs Cradle and Fracture?"Nothing of the sort. For now. The Secretary of Defense believes they're viable options, but Precursor screening and approval are always required before they're allowed to openly hunt notable targets. What remains of the previous team that was tentatively approved will remain at the Institute as enforcement and protection. New blood for new problems. They'll take care of lesser known threats for now, and the increasing attacks on cities near Crimen Culpae 1. I simply need the vaunted Precursors to approve a second team. For all that's happened, the first group did alleviate quite a lot of smaller headaches. And several larger ones.""All--all that's happened?" Sparrow repeated, mouth agape.
"They nearly all died!""For a good cause." The Director's response was automatic, the answer one she had given enough times that she barely registered the words anymore. A moment, and she clarified.
"Most of the Institutes already deploy subnaturals to fight. This is not news. But none of the Institutes have any recognized team outside of the microcosms of their territories. Of course I'm not asking for complete publicity. Yet. But should they prove capable while under a trial period, perhaps we can finally give the dead and dying some more recognition."Sparrow glared at her, but didn't respond. The Director was right about the Institutes--of course she would be, the woman managed the worst one. Just because they didn't hear about every single subnatural who died didn't mean the "schools" were without their own teams and hand-picked vanguards. Even the lax Director Kleinfelder kept a personal subnatural bodyguard.
"
Primer grupo...," Newton thought aloud, pressing his index finger to his temple, "
That was the one with all the, uh, the crystals, right? Crystal Guy!" He smiled to himself, as if pleased to remember the nickname he'd given Shane Alkana back when Zhang had come to them for approval a little over two years ago. "
Right?" he grinned again, seeking confirmation with whomever was sitting to his right-- a habit that had, on more than one occassion, left him addressing the open air.
Today it happened to be Morph sitting beside him, who merely stared back with all the silently judgemental pity of a cat watching a dog repeatedly run into a glass door. She sighed softly through her nose, adjusting the position of her hands, folded gently in her lap, before returning her attention to the Director. Newton seemed satisfied with that response as he continued speaking, gesturing with his hands as he propped his elbows up on the table.
"
Vince is right though-- two fights isn't a lot. And they weren't even against actual DC monsters! What are these kids supposed to be doing during the trial period to prove they can handle those guys?"
"I'm sure we won't lack threats. But I need official sanction first to send them in as part of enforcement in situations that threaten close to or within a city, rather than as a last resort when hell's already broken loose and the situation is as disadvantageous as possible. This is the same reason I offered two years ago.
Most law enforcement agencies and the military itself try to avoid relying on the power that caused this disaster in the first place, even if their limitations worsen a situation more often than not. They fear the subnaturals escaping. They fear retaliation in combat. And USARILN interference is rarely free of internal issues. Friendly fire. Sending the subnaturals in on suicide tactics. With permission from the Department of Defense, I can bypass those reservations by force and command more deterrence as far as unsavory behavior is concerned.
Without permission, my hands are tied if a stray bullet finds its way into an unfortunate subnatural's head in less than clear circumstances. They're not official support, so no investigations. No one has any fear of striking them down and no one has any obligation to yield a situation to them first."The Director let out a long breath, reminding herself this was nothing compared to the small mounds of paperwork that she had needed to complete and all the prior meetings she had attended to even gather the Precursors for a final meeting at the very end of the food chain.
"They can potentially do much more during a trial period with permission than without. That's the simple fact of it.""Does the doing 'much more' include catering to your own agenda, Director, or just getting chomped by some DC babies?" Merlin snickered,
"We wouldn't want another 'primer grupo' happening here.""And even if it did, what's the real harm to anyone?" Besides themselves, of course, and in all things she needed to maintain a cold affectation. She did
not care about them as humans--they were subnaturals and only worthwhile as valuable resources in combat.
"It may seem silly to others, that paperwork comes before saving lives, but order is all that holds us from sheer chaos. I could send the students in with or without overarching permission if I had an agenda to cater to. I could stir up that kind of trouble. I won't."Benediction regarded the clear, glass surface of the table as carefully as Foresight still creased and uncreased her paper.
"Unless your team proves itself more capable," he said at last, still perplexed at glass and more,
"I will not go out of my way to help. The Precursors come first in any choice.""Then hopefully our own healers will manage.""Hopefully," Benediction echoed, eyes watching a memory in the glass. A second later and he was running a hand through his hair, sweeping back the strands that had strayed from the mousse. Hadn't applied enough that morning, after all.
"Vincent, final call? Or anyone else?""I could help them--if I'm not busy," Sparrow chimed in, her offer shallow. She was always busy. Flight and invulnerability both were priceless in combat.
"Julia..." Prism briefly considered contesting her friend's statement before sighing,
"I suppose I'll do the same. As long as they clean up after themselves.""Yeah, it shouldn't be a problem," Merlin stretched and yawned,
"If they wipe themselves out, less work for us. If they actually manage to get things going..." He shrugged,
"No biggie. Again, less work for us. Hopefully. As long as they stay fully clothed."βAlright.β -Vincent shrugged, the gesture half-hearted and barely there. His gaze fell on a random spot on the wall; the Precursor seemingly had lost all interest in the conversation β
βGo right ahead then. It really doesnβt matter to me how many children you send out to die. But you two,β he glared at Prism and Sparrow in turn,
"should keep your emotions in check. Don't think I won't notice if you rush to their aid instead of keeping the monsters at bay.""...You're really horrible sometimes, Vincent," Sparrow glared back.
Prism, on the other hand, cringed but quietly concurred with the tactician's reprimand,
"Monsters first, superkids second."Vincent was the first to stand and leave, blandly promising to inform the Secretary of Defense within the next hour of the Precursor team's general approval. The telekinetic wasn't irreverent in the way Merlin was, but he found bureaucracy an immense waste of his time. It was necessary, he supposed, but so was sleeping and eating and he considered those things immense wastes of time as well.
He had stopped trying to effect a semblance of family among the Precursors after they had lost Simeon. There was no point, he had come to realize and had later come to accept. One day it was Simeon, the next day it could be Annie or Luke or Renard. Two years ago it had
almost been Julia. Better to accept and expect their deaths rather than hope against it. All he could do for them was strategize to the best of his intelligence and minimize their chances of dying.
Hope you have your own field tactician, Director. Hope he's faster on the draw than me.He heard Julia calling to him from a distance, his strides through the maze of interconnected corridors of the Pentagon too fast for her to catch up. She'd lose him soon if he kept moving at that pace, and he'd probably find her waiting in the hallway of their underground rooms, cheeks red and eyes alight, because she would still be angry at him for not showing more concern for others.
His steps slowed marginally, calculated just enough that the rapid tapping of her boots from behind him would catch up before he rounded the next corner.
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The small town boasted a population of less than five hundred, nestled in a little valley of coal veins that had sustained the locale for some hundred odd years. In the past ten years, the mayor had devoted more money towards arming the local police force and patchwork militia, especially after the initial burst of monsters from underground. Several mining tunnels had been entirely collapsed to fend them off and dozens of citizens had been lost simply hunting down the ones that had managed to escape before the blockade. The few subnaturals who had awoken in the town on that bleak day had long left, one way or another. Several died the instant the mark appeared on their bodies. Others remained for some time after, only to lose their minds and provoke a bullet through the chest.
The ones who cooperated were reported, and military trucks had come to take them away, leaving behind minimal official presence. The military simply didn't have the forces to spare anymore and there were better locations to protect. Now the people lived in fear. Hundreds had relocated to the larger cities in the years following The Slumber and then to Crimen Culpae 1 when the government established the town and USARILN East in 2012, looking for strength in numbers and a stronger military presence.
The townsfolk who remained were simply hardier or foolhardy. Or both. But they stayed, all the same, unwilling to give up generations of established lives even when the world turned upside down.
Now it was paying off, they thought, as the attacks grew less frequent over the years and as the town became more accustomed to fending off lessers creatures.
For all the bursts of battle that had broken out often along the East Coast, they had suffered relatively little damage. The people in their colonial-styled homes and creaking wooden porches framed by substantial balustrades liked to believe luck was on their side, like karma had rewarded them for unyielding tenacity and traditional fervor.
Smarter people knew a bit better why, and they knew, without being told, to keep their mouths shut, especially when the last person who tried to claim the town's persistent safety was due to something more insidious than luck disappeared quite abruptly.
Several of the old, collapsed coal mines had been miraculously restored with metal shaped smoothly to support a network of hallways and rooms, though the main entrances were left alone to cement the impression that the mines were beyond salvage. Closer inspection would reveal the metal support work increasingly absurd, because surely someone in the small town would have noticed the installation of what appeared to be a continuous sheet of metal entirely free of rivets and seams that became both floor and walls for a subterranean base of operations as large as several mansions. But if that strangeness didn't ward off intruders, the humming, white sigils sliding along the walls would have.
Subnaturals.
Deep in the maze of metalwork, a group of 12 Aberrations waited quietly in a spacious room of pilfered furniture and mismatched decor, varying sizes of candles and portable, electric lighting illuminating what would otherwise be pitch darkness. Large sofas and moth-eaten couches lined most of the walls and small tables had been arranged roughly in front of the seats. The room's center was taken up by a long, wooden dining table that sported several sections of metal along its legs and surface, the material mending whatever damage the table had accrued on transport.
An unassuming woman in a simple white sweater and dark slacks sat on a corner of the table, her phone screen in hand shining light across the X on her throat, the gray of her lined eyes, and the pale complexion of her oval face and its wide nose and full cheeks that gave way to a tall forehead alleviated by the sloping lines of her long, black hair brushed smooth and parted at the center. Full lips painted a muted red quirked down as a boy's screams echoed continuously from a nearby room, rising and falling as he breathed and screamed again, the sounds hoarse and ragged. She crossed and uncrossed her legs, the frown worsening.
In a couch to the left of the table, a thin, pasty man with sparse brown hair combed over neatly across his scalp fiddled almost daintily with his round-rimmed glasses before carefully putting them back in front of sunken, brown eyes, smoothing out invisible wrinkles in his brown dress shirt and black trousers afterwards. He hated loud, irritating noises almost as much as she did, but interrupting now would be problematic, so he leaned back in the chair and rested interlocked fingers across his stomach, shifting so he could stretch his gangly legs out to rest one on top of the other.
The other ten Aberrations sat far from the duo, voices hushed even at that distance and when she looked up towards the direction of the screams, several of them flinched like she had looked at them instead.
"I dislike loud noises," the woman spoke, her voice soft and enunciation precise. Every click of a plosive sound and every slide of a fricative came out clearly, and even at that volume her words were easily understood.
"I very much dislike loud noises, Galen.""I'm sure he's almost done," the reedy man replied, but he knew the announcement of an oft-repeated fact for what it was: a kill order. The entrances to the next room had been completely sealed up during the process, in case anything went wrong, and their metallurgically gifted mage was busy repairing and reinforcing the hideout in a different location.
The man--Galen--stood up, and another him without an X walked out of the space behind his body just as the original's face and features disappeared into a smooth, featureless surface of pale skin, lacking hair or ears. None of this seemed to have any adverse effect on the brand-new mannequin headed man, however, and Galen simply reached over to the puppet's throat, grabbing it and clutching tight as a white mark flickered into existence across the fake's right temple. He let go and it stumbled over to the wall that separated their current room from the one next door, pressing both hands against the surface of the metal as the material creaked and bent, twisting and furling away from the point of contact.
Human flesh and blood came away with it, too, but the increasingly misshapen hands chased the retreating metal until a rough hole had been formed, more than large enough to accomodate even Galen's six feet of height.
The puppet collapsed to the ground afterwards, both arms in bloody ruins and body convulsing, though its mouth never made a sound. It stopped moving all of a sudden when the original man's head returned to normal, features slipping back onto his face like they were emerging from water. He picked up a large rug from the floor, walking over to the dummy that now sported the mannequin head and throwing the woven cloth over its form.
Snikt. Snikt. Snikt. He held the knife aloft, dragging the blade along the length of the honing steel. One, two. Rinse and repeat. At his gentle coaxing, the sharpened steel sang its unique melody. Clear like glass, but not quite as brittle. Some people told him it was grating. Like nails on chalk boards. Personally, he had always found the sound soothing. Maybe it was less about the sound, but the rhythm of it. Just one, two, one, two. Top then bottom. He could get lost in the simple motion so easily.
A soft whimper of pain brought him back.
β
God, can you shut up for one fucking second?β He grumbled, but paused nonetheless, examining the knife in his hand. It was just a simple carving knife. Not even the expensive kind with Damascus steel and shiny patterns. Just the ones they had at the local supermarket. He didnβt mind, really. Didnβt need many fancy tools when you had the skills.
And speaking of skills, maybe it was time to put them to work. He turned around, coming face to face (or in this case, face to legs) with his latest charge. A brown-haired boy, hanging up-side down from the low ceiling by thick ropes tied around his remaining ankle and the red stump of his left leg. There were no bondages to hold his arms, but that didnβt seem necessary as they only hung limply from his partially deformed body, bruised and bent in awkward angles. Linus had applied his power frequently in the past few days, finding the potential in the boy so astounding he couldn't help but go a bit further than necessary. Strange metalworks of brass and copper protruded from the boy's calves and hips, the perversion of his power's effects consuming the boy slowly. Much too slowly for Linus's liking. Clearly, he needed the unfortunate subject to be a bit more broken. This one was surprisingly stable, and every modification of the power--every little tweak that forced a warped progression of the ability--had only slightly weakened that mental fortitude. Usually, his ability alone was enough. For the most part, minds were more malleable the longer Linus applied the effect, but this boy was significantly better at resisting than everyone who had come before.
It was a property that actually came with the power's growth, which surprised the resident magic manipulator of that particular Fracture cell. He had never encountered an ability that resisted him
more as he strengthened it, and the mental instability that naturally came as a side effect of his tweaking hadn't made much progress on the boy by itself. Not from that angle at least.
But his power was more of a genius than him at that. It had wormed and wedged and wound until it found a crack in the shell. A place to strike. It was a simple thing, like so many people were when you cut them down into their individual components and laid them out across a table. This was a simple boy who was afraid of simple things. Pain would do to soften the raw material. Then Linus could
really get to work.
Another groan tried to escape from the boy when he saw the flash of a knife, but the thick duct tape around his mouth choked the sound down to another pained whimper.
Screaming, now
that was a grating noise. Linus never understood how some people could even remotely enjoy that.
It did his temper no favour when this one screamed quite a lot. Amalia did mention that he was quite mouthy. Well, he wouldnβt be for much longer now.
With a final look at the blade in his hand, Linus took a few steps forward, closing that final distance between him and his half-naked charge. Then he got to work. Two fingers trailed a line on the boyβs torso, counting the ribs until he reached the spot on the stomach that dipped slightly. With a quick flick of his wrist, he made a shallow cut there, a focal point on his canvas.
The cut barely leaked, and already, the spineless wimp squirmed, more noises petered out from beneath the duct tape.
He sighed, right leg launching a kick right into the boyβs jaws. It would have been more gratifying to break the nose, but he couldnβt let the kid suffocate. Not yet, at least.
The kick only elicited more pained noises, and the boy didnβt stop his squirming. Linus couldnβt work like this. So he moved closer still, putting one heavy foot down on the crook of the boyβs broken arm, holding it in place. There was little he could do about the whimpering, but at least the body stayed relatively still now. He reached down and ripped the duct tape off, eliciting more screaming. Couldn't be helped. Had to plug up the nose or the blood would do it for him, and his power didn't work on the dead, unlike Nasrin and Galen. So he let the boy scream himself dry as he wadded two sheets of tissue into the nostrils and returned to work.
He made the second incision. A deeper cut this time, right on top of the old one. Then another one. But he didnβt put much depth in the lines, only enough to score the skin and expose the red beneath. Then more lines, horizontal, to complete the shape, so he could reach in with his fingers and peel back the flesh. Warmth was slick and sticky on his bare fingers, rivulets of it splattering at his feet. It was that thing about live people; they always bled too much and the blood made everything so slippery. He frowned as he wiped his hands against the black of his apron, before getting right back to the thick of it. The trick here was to work fast. And sharp knives. Sharp knives helped.
Soon enough, he was lost in the rhythm of simple motions again, chasing the lines beneath peeled flesh with the tip of his knife, trimming and carving and pruning until there was nothing but red on display, all the while screams were the percussion of his
magnum opus.
The unnatural sound of metal groaning and screaming behind him made Linus pause, the blood already pooling well past his feet and spreading outwards radially.
"I didn't say I was done yet," he complained at the two standing in the backlight of the other room. His small studio was lit by one portable light box tucked in a corner and hooked up to a generator, shading the grisly scene with startling contrast and darkening the spreading blood further away from the light source. In front of Linus was the unfinished project, where the skin of the boy's chest had been cleanly flayed and spread outward like wings, the hanging tips of flesh haphazardly tacked to the boy's upside-down arms while Linus snipped away at uneven edges on the skin. The screams had faded to bursts of quiet shrieks in the shock, and the boy's eyes were wide, raw and red-rimmed from days of torture both mental and physical.
Maybe it'd work a bit better now.
Linus preferred to be alone for his therapy sessions with the victims, but Nasrin looked murderous and Galen was already summoning another puppet, so the man turned to face them fully, his thumb and forefinger curled into an O shape and the rest of his fingers splayed.
"Just a sec, Gale. If he doesn't die to this, he'll die to you, so hold on to that murderous apathy for just a smidge longer."The man snapped his face back to the student Amalia and Oscar had captured about four days ago, gleefully crouching down and grabbing the upside-down face with both hands.
"I'll make you tick, yet, Cogsworth," he grinned, the nickname stirring up a brief memory of that childhood movie in a house too full of children. At times with his fellow Aberrations--especially now, he felt like he was back in that dismal townhouse, despite the much larger base. The thought spurred him to make this session his absolute best yet.
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In a town where the local butcher knew almost everyone by name, age, and several degrees of family relations, hiding wasn't easy, but for the few subnaturals who had recently woken up within the past few months and had been lucky enough to not get caught, a shambling house on its last legs near several of the older collapsed mine shafts was home and haven, no matter how much the roof threatened to cave in on them and no matter how often their stomachs growled whenever their only steady source of food spent too long in town because his invisibility had run out yet again and there were too many people nearby.
The townsfolk didn't wander near up the old hill by some unspoken agreement, and indeed something in the area felt
wrong, whether by unconscious acceptance of that eerie desolation or by some subnatural magic at work. Five people were holed up in the crumbling house's cellar where the cold sat on them like it had physical weight but the walls were in slightly better shape. Stolen flashlights and batteries provided enough light for them to see each other as they waited fearfully. A stocky, surly boy with a crew cut and a white mark sat apart from the group of X's, tearing savagely into a sandwich despite the tense atmosphere.
A rolling thunder of noise from underground had woken them all up, and the possibility of a larger Dreamcatcher creature assaulting the town was on everyone's minds. At least around their area, the occasional swarm of floating, vertically slitted eyeballs and ghastly, slender-limbed abominations were dispatched quickly enough, the frailest-looking of them possessing enough of a trump card that he alone could manage any danger that drew near. Anything that came at the town from other directions, they couldn't help, but at least on their end the group still had some childish remnants of wanting to be lauded as heroes.
Larger creatures, though. That was a different matter. Even their small town--always late to receive news and supplies--knew the dangers of the larger ones. If the smaller creatures knew to hunt down the town's main cache of weapons, knew to strike at hands before they could reach for a gun, knew to poison the water and food, then the larger creatures would know all that and more, because they could
do more.
What came out of a distant mine shaft entrance in a spray of rocks and boulders, however, was worse than that.
At first, it looked vaguely human, despite strange metallic segments jutting out of the body at odd angles, most notably around the head and torso. But as it walked towards the town, those segments grew, the material warping and dragging out of the deformed silhouette before expanding into armatures and scattered gear shapes in cardioid movement, whipping around the form until nothing was visible but a roiling mass of metal like a ball of brass snakes. And that became a reinforced core as the clockwork mechanisms whirred and exploded into a towering, humanoid shape nearly a hundred meters tall and bent at too many angles. Arms, legs, and neck hooked and spun on five ball-and-socket joints each, the balance precarious until more limbs sprouted from the awkward cant of the torso and stabilized the movement. At the center of the torso lay a hollow circle like a chunk had been cut clean from the monster and the now almost smooth, circular heart was suspended by a series of metallic linkages in that empty center.
Red eyes multiplied in random order on the grotesque cranium where grooves formed around the head and eyes glowed to life on all angles, filling up the surface area and spreading outward on downward jutting segments of mechanization attached to the head by thick, copper lines, forming the impression of two low pigtails curving outward like hooks.
The multi-jointed neck finally lolled enough that the movements found an easy placement atop the torso of whirling wires and gears, though several clumsy steps forward on its four legs made the head tilt sideways again, neck crooked in five places as it moved towards the town.
And it wasn't alone.
Hulking clockwork androids with arms that slid along the ground behind them and spasmed as they walked crawled out of the mine shaft now. Gears and cogs spun as massive canines in brass plating stalked out as well, eyes gleaming red. Snaking centipedes as large as a person and far longer skittered along the ground on razor-sharp legs, movements erratic as the blades diced the ground along their winding advance. Hollow exoskeletons of iron and copper wobbled out from behind the more complete creatures, forms misshapen and barely connected by a thin frame of steel. They finished assembling as they moved, however, the material splashing out of thin air like an unseen junkyard was disgorging its contents into reality. Hawks and vultures, lifting off on frail frames of wings lined with thin sheets of metal in imitation of flight feathers.
Linus had pushed the boy far. Much too far.
Higher thought processes had taken a backseat to shapes and creatures that the teenager's mind defaulted to. Animals from memory, and a hometown left behind. There was a childish wish to protect people in there, and the man had taken that too, plucking it from the annals of desires and perverting it with a warped iteration of the power's improvement.
Cogsworth wanted to protect people? So he would.
The small army of clockwork creatures rampaged through the abandoned houses and buildings closest to the older mine shafts, the towering leader skidding and stumbling down the incline towards the town proper. Their approach was now loud enough that the town's lights flickered on in the near distance. Militia sprang to action with law enforcement and what limited military forces were stationed there, gunfire and panicked shouts ringing into the night as the myriad eyes whirled on the clockwork king's head, spinning and locating hostiles.
Dangerous. Enemies were dangerous.
The eyes located danger and locked on, urging the faster creatures to move ahead, catching hold of people like skewering animals. Protect. And the clockwork monsters dug into flesh and bone with cold metal, wrapping into and around their human prisoners without killing them.
He could protect them. He could protect them.
This was how he could keep them safe.In the nearly collapsed cellar of the broken house now run over and torn down by the surge of creatures, the subnatural kids struggled to pull one of theirs out, the crying girl caught beneath several large beams of wood that had fallen across her even as she tried to move.
"Burn the fucking wood off, Fiona!" The angry boy from earlier, previously sitting apart from the group, had a surprisingly high pitched voice as he fumbled uselessly with the heavy pieces of lumber.
The girl below just kept crying, shaking her head. She had been useless from day one. A power to call fire but she was terrified of flames even though her flames never burnt her, and only when that weird psychosis she had pushed her to the limit did she finally take to the nearby buildings and forgotten houses, burning the remnants of wood and iron scattered around, panicking all the while.
On more than one occasion, they'd had to stop an X mark from continuing, because a car was coming down the potholed road and they still hadn't decided if they wanted to be free or be caught. But lately the decision leaned towards the latter for most of them, because they were always thirsty and hungry and hadn't yet found the nerve to fully run away.
"Here, move!" a taller boy in the group called out, shoving the white mark aside and shifting quickly into a large bear, easily two meters in length. It roared and shoved both front paws against the thick beams of wood, heaving them off the small girl and freeing her enough that the crew cut boy and another girl could pull Fiona free.
She lay on the ground and continued to cry afterwards, while a thin skeleton of a boy stood nearby, his face gaunt and his body bony enough someone could mistake him for a biology classroom's model.
"...Guys? We should...check upstairs," he announced when the shapeshifter had turned back into human form. The cellar door and stairs had been crushed in the initial charge, but between the five of them that wasn't the worrisome part. It was whatever had obliterated and crashed through everything above them.
The other four backed away as the rail-thin boy approached the wreckage of an exit and...shattered. His body broke apart into what looked like large panes of glass, then those transparent panels scattered even further. Glimmering shards remained in a tight, square-shaped field around where he originally stood and the gravel and wood immediately nearby sported deep gouges and cuts. The bulk of the ruined exit had been pulverized into smaller fragments, and the cloudy darkness above was now visible. The boy's body fluttered back together, and he collapsed to the floor, breathing heavily.
Their shapeshifter wasted no time morphing into a bear again, nudging his fellow subnatural aside and using the cushioned bulk of the creature's body to push the now decimated rubble into an easy mound for them to climb and leave. It was convenient having their own portable wood chipper, but the guy's power really seemed to have its drawbacks on him.
Once the group was free from the cellar, the white-marked mage looked towards the town and froze, face blank as he took it in. The remainder of their ragtag band joined him in that silent observance, the moment shared between them.
A mechanical creature on four spindly legs bending and twirling on normally impossible angles was tearing through the town, its head filled to the brim with red lights for eyes that never stayed still, and every dip and sway of its body was destruction and every swipe of its roving, pawing arms caught power lines and people all at once.
At its feet were the writhing exoskeletons of accompanying monsters firing shots back at the failing city defenses, and in its wake was blood and fire, the stench of burning wood wafting towards them in the early morning air. If the kids had missed their lives in town before, they despaired for them now.
"What do we...holy fuck...what do we do?" It was the shapeshifter asking, eyes still fixed on the scene before them.
But for all their hesitation, Fiona--of all people--cried out for battle first, running headlong into the flames she feared so much screaming for her little brother and wrapping herself in a cloak of fire that seared the earth behind her.
The remaining X marks rushed after her, fear tight on their beating hearts and burning lungs, but feet propelled by that unabated glee at the sight of the wanton destruction. The distant screams and gunfire sang to them like sirens, and none of them noticed the white mark in their group stepping backwards and into invisibility, hiding somewhere safe from the chaos.
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Monday rained and thundered above USARILN East, the water rushing in torrents down the sides of streets and flooding into the gutter drains. The sky had stockpiled a storm like ammunition and winds now whipped at the tops of trees with a vicious fervor. The Institute's normally sparse activity was reduced to a ghost town for the day, every student hiding out in their respective rooms with the blessing of cancelled classes.
Even the staff didn't want any part of this brutal weather.
The few remaining soldiers still patrolling stuck close to building eaves, avoiding the worst of the rain as best they could. The Director hadn't yet returned from Virginia, still mired in political manuevering and endless reams of paperwork, so they took the opportunity to slack when they could. Commander Kardos was a strict man, but he wasn't entirely without heart, especially where his soldiers were concerned, and their beliefs were affirmed when no one reprimanded them for deviating from standard patrol paths.
The man in question, rather than letting them slack, however, was dealing with something much more severe. A town in Maryland under attack from what appeared to be a category three or four. He had received warning of it late Saturday and had already sent ahead several teams of veteran subnaturals and two platoons of 30 soldiers each to contain the situation. It wasn't nearly enough, but that was all they could reasonably spare without leaving the school too unattended.
The Director had allowed the remainder of experimental unit A to participate, along with several recently recovered students, courtesy of several doctors overstepping enough over a week ago that they had a few more combat-capable subnaturals ready for the occasion. Neither of them had voiced their disappointment that a certain Shane Alkana had yet to wake up, preferring to focus their energies on a solution first. The Precursors immediately came to mind, but anyone who could fight had been sent, again, to the bloodier European-Asian Theater within the last several days, where the largest threats were attacking again in full force, recovered from their last bout with the bulk of the Precursor team. The creatures' continued escape and resurgence was a large point of criticism when it came to the reliability of the Precursors, but there was no helping that they chose the defenders' weariest moments to make their escape, knowing full well the battle of attrition would take its toll on the humans first.
And so relatively
lesser threats were left to either wreak havoc until a Precursor could return and rest enough to fight, or until an alternative group of subnaturals took care of it. USARILN East had the uneviable position of dealing with nearly every issue on the East Coast, rain or shine, and Commander Kardos had hoped against hope that this latest status update was good news. Of course it wasn't.
Beyond the horrifically negative public image of firebombing a quaint town in their own country (as if that had ever worked well against the majority of Dreamcatcher's monsters), the government's hands were tied even further at the proximity of the attack to general locales of importance along the East Coast. They wanted it dealt with, and without needing to resort to desperate options.
Soldiers had been deployed and USARILN East had been volunteered for subnatural help, as it always was.
Ethan was on the line, requesting permission to retreat and notifying the Commander of several rogue subnaturals they had encountered in the fray, asking for further orders on both that matter and the current creatures terrorizing the town. They had managed to push the largest back towards the mines further from the town, but there it had settled in to spawn more of its mechanical minions. With every one they destroyed, a new one took its place and if there was a limit to the monsters, they had yet to find it. At the very least, the behemoth of iron, steel, and brass seemed unable to actively fight while it was generating more creatures, but where they had positioned it in what they'd hoped was an effective cornering tactic had turned into a defensible position for the damned thing, and most of them couldn't get close now. The ones who could didn't want to risk being stranded in the center of the spawning clockworks.
The Director had already cleared the new group's deployment if circumstances were severe, but Commander Kardos hadn't expected a disaster this soon and this close. A three hour drive on the interstate would be more than enough time to reach Wisford, and more than enough time for the creature to venture closer to USARILN East (if they were lucky) or closer to a larger hub of human activity. The cities around Wisford had already been placed on lockdown, and the units stationed there were already expecting the worst.
"Permission to retreat denied. We'll be sending a second group of subnaturals as backup," the Commander replied, already thumbing through the thick stack of papers granting the new team tentative permission to operate in nearly all locations and under the majority of circumstances. He picked the carefully binder-clipped sheets up and walked out of his spartan office, dropping them off with Mr. Greten before making his way towards the underground command center of the administrative building, positioned in the same hallway that conveniently led to the underground parking lot of armored vehicles and personnel carriers.
On the way, he ordered the remaining guards on standby to gather the relevant students, as well as prepare the relevant equipment. Most of them didn't know how to handle a gun, yet, but he would provide at least melee weapons rather than send them into a fight like that unarmed. Kardos had always considered their powers less of a defining aspect and more of a very prominent tool. Supplemented with appropriate equipment (and disregarding the dangerously powerful armaments from Hephaestus), their main tricks of the trade would potentially be much more effective in a real situation.
He felt magnanimous that day, and reminded his escorts to bring umbrellas for the students.
At roughly 6:45 in the morning, guards found their charges and spared the unfortunate students time to prepare before leading them under large umbrellas towards the administration building. The dripping vinyls were shaken off and cast into metal bins at the entrance to the marble-floored hallways edged with pilasters and abstract paintings framed in bright, burnished metal. Without letting them loiter long at the entrance, the group of guards herded them down a hallway that hooked behind a corner and out of sight, revealing, once they'd stepped around the edge, a wide set of descending stairs bisected by a simple handrail.
Further down, more hallways and rooms well-lit by carefully positioned cove lighting spread out like a maze, and the soldiers directed the group towards a set of frosted glass doors at the end of the main hallway, emerging into a room much like an expensive lecture hall where long, white tables inlaid with computer screens and keyboards awaited them, four to a table, with a keyboard and mouse that slid out soundlessly from a recessed partition below the screen.
Commander Kardos stood at the head of the room, beside a monitor that covered the entire front wall and currently displayed a map of an unknown town and several nearby cities with certain areas highlighted in red.
"Sit," he ordered, and turned to a raised monitor and keyboard near him, in much the same manner as the other desks. Several clicks and key presses later, the image on the screen swapped to a blurry still of a large, metallic creature on four spindly legs flailing its two arms unnaturally bent on five joints. The creature was rendered in shades of brass and iron bearing down on the unfortunate photographer.
The students found themselves nudged into seats at random, any groups clustered together from the start seated near each other in no particular order.
As they sat down in the fixed swivel chairs, the screens inlaid flat on the table rose to meet them at a comfortable viewing angle, displaying the same image.
Commander Kardos didn't waste time with pleasantries.
"For now we're classifying this as a category three. Most of you are still new here and don't know the classifications, so I'll be brief. All categories are direct threats to human lives, but a category one is a negligible threat to order, society, and infrastructure. Two is a minor threat. Three is a significant threat. And a four is critical. The rarely-used category five would be 'catastrophic.' For an example: the creature that decimated Palo Alto, California in 2011.""What you're seeing here, however, is not a Dreamcatcher creature, despite appearances. Ms. Schur has confirmed that this--" he gestured at the screen
"--is a subnatural. Which means two things: first, you are potentiallly looking for a human target to eliminate; second, the target can hear and understand you.""What information the advance teams have gathered follows: it has metalwork generation abilities, though it seems restricted to shapes that are self-sustaining--animals, mostly. They've driven it back into a safer corner of the town to minimize damage, but now it's bunkered down and flooding the current combatants with generated constructs. This has given the teams a chance to note that it cannot seem to summon and move at the same time, which is both a curse and a blessing here. We can't risk withdrawing the current teams and soldiers unless we want to lose the town entirely, but that means we also cannot move them for a better strike.
That's why you're all here."The next hour covered the details of the attack, where the group of subnaturals would be separated according to how their abilities would most benefit the fight.
Callan, Christopher, and Sander were singled out as direct strikers, their unique properties allowing an easy pass of a helicopter overhead and straight onto the creature itself.
Hazel, Angelique, Grant, Siena, and Emma were supports, meant to attack and distract the bulk of the creatures in whatever way they could while the strikers fought the main body.
Gregory and Brent were assigned suppression roles, to position themselves in view of the strikers and supporters, providing ranged support against the constant tide of mechanized monsters without drawing the main aggressor's attention to themselves.
Lilianna, Kusari, and Allison were sectioned off as one healer group, positioned separately from another in case either healer's position was compromised. Movements needed to be relayed to the team, so people were aware where the healers were at all times. This came with a warning, however, that--like sniper checking a superior officer--a team member was never supposed to lead an enemy to a healer's position or reveal the location of one to any hostiles. In practice, this was much easier said than done, but all retreats to a healer's position required detours and double-checking for tails.
Christmas, Ernie, and Zoe made up a second healer group, to be assigned a location once they arrived on site.
Lawrence, Sophia, Savannah, and Marcus were a roving group intended to help locate and evacuate any injured combatants or civilians to a healer, with the stipulation that they were to abandon any targets that could potentially involve them in a fight.
"Be ready to adjust as circumstances change," the Commander concluded, motioning for the guards to ready up.
"Our meteorologist predicts the storm will lessen in another five to seven hours. We'll send you out then. Appropriate equipment for your capabilities will be provided and are being prepared as we speak, but bring anything you think will help.
We've set up a temporary base five miles south of town. Any retreats should head there first, and any orders to retreat will refer to that location unless otherwise specified.
Make sure to eat. If you're leaving the campus, make sure to return within five hours.
Dismissed."At the conclusion of the briefing, the soldiers prodded them out the doors again and back into the weather blustering in sheets of rain and vicious gales against the walls of the Institute. At a small mercy, the escorts had retrieved the umbrellas from the metal bin and led the entire group directly towards the portico of the dining hall, helpfully depositing the students there and leaving each of them with an umbrella before returning to their posts.
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